Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Every librarian should be armed with a personal space heater beneath and an oscillating fan atop his or her workstation. These may need to be run simultaneously to satisfy your extreme sensitivity to temperature and the library's nonsensical heating and cooling system.

Try 30+ degree celsius temperatures with 90% humidity and no air conditioning. Imagine having to dodge bees flying around your workstation because you have to keep the windows open to avoid suffication.

And maybe there should be a mention of hot flashes with the reminder that not all of us in the building are menopausal women! I'm sick of freezing my young librarian a$$ off!Although the overweight men complain just as much about it being "too hot". Whine. Lose some weight. I'm sitting here typing with gloves on for @#!$%&'s sake!

Yes, my office is too close to the front desk so the poor girls who are doing all kinds of physical, sweat-inducing work are sweltering while I sit freezing at my desk!

My office is noticably colder and I sit here shivering all day! There's a huge A/C vent right above my head in my office while the front desk girls have two tiny A/C vents about 20 feet from where they're working.

And why do they put the thermostadts in areas completely unrelated to the areas they're heating/cooling?! I once worked in a library where the thermostadt for my teen room was located in an enclosed computer lab! Of course it's always hot in a closed computer lab, so the thermostadt thought we were warm enough and so never heated the teen room!

HVACs have been the bane of every library I've ever worked in (which is six)

No mention of faux fur-covered hot water bottles? I have one in addition to the fan heater that is aimed to blow under the desk in the hope that the warmed air gets trapped under the desk, the pashminas and extra jumpers.

The heating/cooling controls in our building are not even IN the building, they are located in the facilities building which is across campus! Try telling the facilities people that it is too hot or too cold & they will tell you that the temp looks fine to them.

Don't forget the handy cardigan! Since our branch likes to keep temperatures at a steady 65 degrees year round, I find it necessary to keep a permanent jacket or cardigan and pair of gloves at my desk. The temperature was over 100 the other day, but I had to come to work dressed in a sweater.

Thank you!!! Being in a 100 plus weather with unending heat that blasts through the front door like a furnace, it's hard not to complain when it's almost eighty at the front desk and about sixty in the offices.

Gotta love the comment about fat men. Does that make it ok to complain about the diet-obssessed, skeletal, neurotic women? I didn't think so. I'm at 77 degrees and 50%humidity and often wish it were cooler. Oh well...

Our building has different climate zones. I'm always hot at my desk, but I'm the only one who works in that particular area of the building, so my complaints are usually ignored since I'm the only one who ever mentions it, and it usually takes a whole slew of complaints before they actually try to do readjust the temperatures. Oh well, when I get too hot I ordinarily just manufacture a reason to go talk to one of my co-workers who works in an arctic zone, and when I cool down enough I go back to my own desk.

Also, to anonymous at 4:52 p.m.: So, the menopausal librarians should just shut up and deal with being hot (presumably because they are old, and therefore do not have the right to be comfortable). The fat men should also just shut up (presumably because they are fat, and therefore do not have the right to be comfortable). Everyone else should just deal with the temperature that would be most comfortable for you, I guess? I s'pose you're lucky that you just happen to be PERFECT, so no one can find fault with your reasons for being too cold. Get over yourself already.

After working a while in a small library with a menopausal woman AND a skinny woman (who was post-menopausal) who wanted to wear sleeveless shirts and sandals year round, I came firmly round to the menopausal woman's side.

The person who's cold can (within reason) add clothing; convention limits the amount of clothing the menopausal/pregnant woman may remove.

Are you wearing gloves because it's that cold, or to make a statement? Just sayin'...